Thinking about Warhammer?

[pawsplay]

Things not to like? Um...

The monsters are somewhat spread out among books?

 

[Aus_Snow]

Things not to like? Um...

The monsters are somewhat spread out among books?

?

So the Bestiary doesn't do its job? Note: serious question - I'm not familiar with the 2e books, just some of 1e.

 

[scourger]

On a related note, what is the best Warhammer adventure in print, even if it's from the old system? And is the old system easily upgradable to the new one?

And what do you fans of WFRP not like about the game? There's got to be something.

I really like the adventure Karak Azgal for WFRP. I liked it so much that I got the game afterward so that I could run it. It's on sale now at Green Ronin's sale, so it is worth picking up cheap right now. We had fun with it for a while. I modified the game to make the heroes more powerful by making most of the foes immediately subject to critical hits. What I like least about the game is that it is too dark & grim (40KRP is even more gothic). So, I kept Karak Azgal after getting rid of the other few books I picked up for WFRP (I'll probably get rid of all the 40KRP stuff).

 

[pawsplay]

?

So the Bestiary doesn't do its job? Note: serious question - I'm not familiar with the 2e books, just some of 1e.

The Bestiary is awesome. It's just that you are, in theory, missing out on some of the crazy awesome monsters in the Chaos sourcebook. I think there's a couple of critters squeezed into the companion volume, too.

 

[Nebulous]

This is actually giving a pretty good impression of Warhammer and some of the weird stuff around.

Warhammer: Age of Ragnarok


Best adventure would be The Enemy Within campaign, I guess.

Bye
Thanee

WHOA. That trailer is amazing.

As for the rpg, does the game lend itself well to full miniatures combat? I guess i mean does it require scags of minis or can you wing it easily without (i prefer minis and big battleboards personally). And is combat itself tactically interesting? It seems like everyone has a ton of options every round, rather than relegating special maneuvers to the careers (which are essentially skill and talent packages).

 

[Nebulous]

I really like the adventure Karak Azgal for WFRP. I liked it so much that I got the game afterward so that I could run it. It's on sale now at Green Ronin's sale, so it is worth picking up cheap right now.

I found this fairly cheap on Amazon and picked it up. Looks like a warhammer dungeon delve in an old dwarf hold. Sweet.

I also grabbed Tome of Salvation because it looked great.

 

[CodexofRome]

If you're coming to Warhammer from D&D, the change in paradigm and attitude can be very difficult.

In D&D, you're the hero and are loaded down with magic items and gold practically the moment you're born. You're built to kick ass and take names. You're tough and durable and powerful even at lower levels. Things are shiny, polished and expensive. D&D has no real setting, and serves itself.

In Warhammer, the system serves the setting. You're just some dude off the streets, with little chance of surviving, let alone beating someone in a fight. The world is filled with terrible things, most of which you know nothing about at first. Things are grim, gritty and cheap. Especially life.

---------------

I will admit freely that I didn't much enjoy playing Warhammer the first time I tried it, which was fairly recently. I was in the midst of running my own 4th ed campaign, and have spent most of my fantasy RP time with D&D. Now, having read through some of the Gotrek and Felix sagas, I'm itching to get back to playing my Dwarven Shieldbreaker.

 

[Nebulous]

Where would one get a good map of the Old World? A big map, the kind of poster map you would hang on the wall?

 

[Obryn]

WHOA. That trailer is amazing.

As for the rpg, does the game lend itself well to full miniatures combat? I guess i mean does it require scags of minis or can you wing it easily without (i prefer minis and big battleboards personally). And is combat itself tactically interesting? It seems like everyone has a ton of options every round, rather than relegating special maneuvers to the careers (which are essentially skill and talent packages).

It's quite literally as minis-intensive as you want it to be. I varied my minis use from combat to combat, depending on the number of foes and the environment.

If you can get your players to use all the various options, there's plenty of choices to be made. Most often, though, you can expect your players to Aim + Attack, Parry + Attack, or Charge. You'll want to use All-Out Attack for monsters a lot, since (1) it shortens combats that can tend to grind out for a long time; and (2) when you inevitably forget to Parry, you at least got some benefit from it.

I love WFRP2. Love it, love it, love it. My players do, too, and we'll be dipping our toes back into it after running 4e a while longer. It's a different kind of game, though, so your players may get their characters killed very quickly.

As a note, combat for beginning characters can drag if you're not careful. Remember that PCs generally have a 30%-40% chance to hit. Once they hit, they could still get parried. Even if they don't get parried, there's a good chance their damage won't get through the enemy's Armor + TB. So yeah, combat can get lengthy at low levels, with a whole lot of nothing happening in long stretches.

As solutions to this, I reduced Armor to Leather = 1, Chain = 2, Plate = 3. I also tended to have my less-intelligent creatures All-Out Attack. It helped a lot!

-O

 

[Rel]

I'm a HUGE fan of WFRP. We played two campaigns worth of it back in 2006-2007 and had a blast.

In the first we did Karak Azgal and that was a lot of fun. Also, the GM was a Warhammer Fantasy Battles player with several armies and we had a few segments of the campaign where we were involved in large scale battles. That worked out really well and was a lot of fun.

In the second campaign (which I ran), I lightened the mood just a tad by running a "Pirates of the Caribbean - Warhammer Style!" (undead pirates, lurking lizardfolk natives, Skull Islands inhabited by Giant Spiders and King Kong and a few dinosaurs thrown in for good measure!) game that had the PC's start off press ganged onto a privateer and later gain command of their own ship. I cobbled together some "ship to ship" fighting rules that were a workable synergy of aerial battle rules I'd used in my Sky Galleons of Mars games and the WFB rules. And we used Pirates of the Spanish Main ships for the battles. That was cool and added another element to the game. The capricious and deadly nature of WFRP combat modeled the dangers of wooden fighting ships with cannon rather well.

Good times.

In terms of things not to like about WFRP, one thing that bothered my sensibilities a bit was the frequent imbalance inherent in the random determination of starting career. I don't mind the randomness itself but if you start as a Peasant and somebody else is a Noble then you just plain suck compared to them. And, given the likely career paths open to you, you're never going to catch up either. That's a bit too much disparity for me to be happy with for an entire campaign.

Our solution was to build a "new and unimproved" list of all the crappy careers and THOSE were the ones you could start as. No Nobles or Soldiers for us. It was all Rat Catchers, Vagabonds and Peasants for us. The underscoring of the "rags" part of "rags to riches" made the riches all the sweeter.

And when I say "riches" I mean a decent set of clothing, food that isn't rotting already and a weapon that probably won't break the next time you swing it.